My 19-year-old son, CO, passed his driving test in the summer of 2022 but unfortunately had an accident and wrote off his car later that same year.

Due to an error, two accidents have been entered on the motor insurance database by his insurer, General Accident, and when his new insurer, WiseDriving, discovered this, it added an extra £860 to his premium, taking the overall cost to £2,000.

When he took out his policy with GA there was a period of 28 days when you could contact it in person. After that, (and perhaps the reason it is cheaper) communications were via email, or the website.

While communications were slow and frustrating, GA did, eventually, pay out and a replacement car was bought. In the summer of 2023, he received a very high renewal quote and moved to WiseDriving, which was about £500 cheaper.

However, shortly after taking out this insurance, WiseDriving got in touch to say it had found two accidents against his name, and unless we could prove this was an error, it was going to increase his premium.

He immediately contacted GA, but could only do so via a form on its website which no one responded to.

In the meantime, WiseDriving took the additional money out of the bank account the original premium had been paid from.

CO finally found a number to call and GA said there were two entries against his name. He pleaded for this to be corrected and, after several more calls, was reassured the duplicate had been removed.

My son forwarded the email he received to WiseDriving, confirming his initial submission was truthful and there was just one accident. However, it wanted harder evidence because an email trail “can be edited”. They also stated the motor insurance database still has two accidents against his name.

As you can imagine, we are increasingly in despair. His insurance is due for renewal soon and it’s likely the database has still not been updated by GA, which is impossible to reach, and we are still more than £800 out of pocket.

MD, Royston

Driving is an increasingly expensive business for the young, with the average cost of insurance about £2,175 a year, according to recent Uswitch research. This makes being able to afford to get behind the wheel hard enough in the first place, without these extra problems.

Aviva-owned General Accident does not emerge well from this sorry tale. After I brought this case to its attention, it finally acted with some urgency. A mistake had been made logging the accident date, and when a third party used a different one, a second claim was logged. GA did not cross-reference the two and after CO contacted it, and the duplicate was identified, no one acted to have it removed from the database.

Aviva says: “We are sorry that CO has experienced problems in getting the erroneously logged claim removed from his insurance records. We are committed to supporting our customers through the claims process and, after a full review of this case, we have contacted the motor insurance database and the duplicate claim will be removed as soon as possible.

“We have also contacted WiseDriving to confirm there is only one claim, so that his current premium can be corrected. We recognise that CO has not received the service he should expect, and have offered £300 in compensation to apologise for any anxiety this may have caused.”

It will take six to eight weeks for the database to update after which, hopefully, things will be more straightforward for your son. He has been treated badly and, if you are not satisfied with this outcome, it is not too late to lodge a complaint with the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Rare praise for an energy firm’s customer service

In some positive news, KB from Inverkeithing wrote to share his experience of great customer service.

When we moved into our house I wanted to stay with our green energy supplier, Ecotricity, but the property had a redundant Economy 10 electricity meter so it was not sure it could take us on.

Nevertheless, within 24 hours it said it could. Now, four years later, it seems we’ve been paying a standing charge for the old meter. We only know because it emailed to say it had spotted the mistake and would refund us about £393, plus £75 compensation.

As customer service goes, that’s pretty hard to beat.

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